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I was asked a question yesterday from someone other than a person from high school who had almost never spoken to me unless they had a computer problem, so for once I felt obligated to answer. Zombie Plan (yes, THAT ZombiePlan) wanted to know how it is I can blog so much and where I get my ideas from.

There are two ways to address the question, the first is the academic way. I am able to blog so much because I endeavour to discover new and exciting fields of study both in my life and in the world around me and therefore I am able to produce blog posts of a high calibre and social value for my readers. As with most academic answers of this nature though, this reason is a lot of hot air and complete nonsense.

As I've said many times here over the years I find blogging a fun distraction from studying and work, I guess you could call it a coping mechanism. It may sound counter-intuitive, but often I blog the most when I have the most amount of work to do! When I'm distracted, my brain can come up with more material. Perhaps when said brain is stimulated it's thinks better, alas I'm no Sam Harris neurologist I'm only interpreting the results in my own frame of reference.

The other thing to try is not something if you're a serious person attempting to write a serious blog. Write nonsense! I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets tired of reading dry, impersonal posts on blogs; buck the trend and put material in posts regarding your own life and experiences when you talk about things. Recently I took this one step further by having a dedicated nonsense category where I can put fun silliness. I remember when I used to work for Discovery Channel as a voice over guy one of the things the director said is that people can tell when you speak whether or not you're smiling just by listening; I reckon the same could be said for blogging.

And while I'm giving away my super duper secrets, my other trick is to just go online and find silly or completely random pictures, often they trigger something in my head and I can write about something. I try to have at least one image associated with each post because I feel text-only blogs kinda defeat the purpose of having a website on the multimedia intertubes anyway. While we're talking about triggers I also have a notebook page on my iTelephone for blog and show topics too which I frantically jot nonsense into whenever I get the chance.

I almost forgot! The other thing is I create the vast majoraty of my blog posts in coffee shops; in Adelaide I sit at the Boatdeck Cafe in Mawson Lakes, in Singapore I sit at any number of Starbucks Coffee thingys. Don't ask me why I'm more productive or mentally stimulated in places like that, because I don't know the answer myself!

Is my blog a good one? Heavens no, it's awful! But that wasn't the question, Zombie Plan wanted to know how I blog so much. I hope this sheds some light onto it. Do lights have fur?